


On September Days

by Jules (the_nightspirit)



Series: A Poison Tree [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, M/M, Mc76 - Freeform, betty is a good girl, betty is the center of this ficlet, betty is too good for you, i should have written more, it took me only an hour that is how i much i love them jackasses, kinda cute bc they are both old now and like things such as sleeping long and reading old books, look at betty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 05:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9641843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_nightspirit/pseuds/Jules
Summary: A short story about Jesse, five years after the Overwatch reunion, visiting a retired Jack Morrison.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, this is a **5 Years Later** of my own fic, and it's just something I wanted to throw in whether I will actually use this later or not. This is why I've been vague about other characters, which show up in my other fics, as well.
> 
> Pairing: I ship Mc76 as asexual life partners and they are my acetp. See my note on chapter 9 on my other fic.

**5 years later...**

 

 

“We all need something watching over us  
Be it the falcons, the clouds or the crows  
And then the sea swept in and left us all speechless  
Speechless

And I never minded being on my own  
Then something broke in me and I wanted to go home  
To be where you are  
And now I'm reaching out with every note I sing  
And I hope it gets to you on some pacific wind  
Wraps itself around you and whispers in your ear  
Tells you that I miss you and I wish that you were here”

Florence + the Machine

 

_If you think of it that way, five years aren’t much. It’s an estimate you spend at college, high school, your first job. A period in your life you like looking back to. Before the ‘five years later’ you wonder what will happen in those five years ahead of you. Will you make it through it alive? Will you still be around the same people and enjoy the same conversations? Will you still sit at the same spot and watch the sun rise as you do today? Five years ago, I never thought to see the date I saw this morning, and I thought I might end up on the great Memorial Wall there, where there are so many names carved into stone of which I knew the person belonging to that name. I stared at the names, one in particular; one I never thought to see there, and in a moment of sentimentality, touched the stone there was nothing I felt except for remorse. I look at the name and wonder: should have sung a lullaby for the love that fell asleep long ago._

_Buried there, underneath the stone, lay the person I was once, too. The name and the ghost that still haunted the wide halls of memory. A cathedral, empty except for statues with hollow eyes which stared at me as I passed them into a world that I once claimed, built, and then ruined myself. A mausoleum of resentment and pain. Now, we’re here and I think about it a little too long, and I wonder: have I been a righteous person? Have I done everything that I could? Could I have done better? I am sure that I have not, but who am I to judge myself when I have no idea whom I have been for many years. I was the first and, too, the last to know the answer, but I dislike speaking the truth nowadays. There I see myself in the mirror and I look back that person I saw years ago. I tell him: this is you in fifteen years and you might regret everything you did and everything you will do. You will be taken for granted, and people will have an opinion about you, misinterpret you, because they are people and they do these things. You’re not one to be taken as the perfect picture of a leading persona, just another mortal soldier who strives into battle for others, those who can’t or won’t. That is what you wanted; you’ve created both a monster and a hero, and this creation will end you. It ended. I am glad it ended._

The road was boring, yet compelling. It was late summer, the third of September, and trees changed to orange and red tones a while ago. The lingering warmth of a merciful August covered people into an annual mood of early shopping and late tea time. Socks, worn over pants, stuck out of dirty boots. People hid in oversized sweaters and underneath woolen hats. The internet wasn’t working here.

                Jesse huffed and put the phone on his bike’s seat before him. He wiped dust of his helmet and peered inside, wondering if anything messy got stuck in there, then he blew the hair out of his face and went inside the shop to pay for a pack of cigarettes, rare these days, and a candy bar. The women behind the till looked at colorful and serene as the surroundings, also a little bit bored. Her thin lips were orange, her hair dyed red, the glasses held in place by a string with pearls on it. She gave him a once over and a tiny smirk rushed across her lips. _Ah, damn. I remember when I was younger and fella like this walked in. I wish I were 30 again._ Jesse smiled crooked. In mutual understanding, he paid and wished her good day. She chuckled.

                His boots left a trace in the sand that was blown here from the road. They’ve turned brown on their tips while the rest was still black, and he stomped onward to his bike, getting on it, and started the engine. What a noise; people didn’t hear such a noise in fifty years. Older people looked up and remembered the days when they were young while a youngster judged him, arranging flowers at a stand. Jesse pushed the helmet onto his head, pulled the shawl across his mouth and nose because the sand was just too much.

                The ride wasn’t much longer anymore judging by from what he remembered when the map still worked.

                Fields turned golden now and trees changed from yellow to red. Some green, lost in the sea of gold, poked up and wiggled in the wind like an exclamation mark. Birds, ravens and others of a similar kind, circled above the fields and angry farmers stared at them with hands on their hips and a frown on their faces. Someone took their dog out and it was funny, because no-one expected people here in this area, just trees and fields- maybe some birds, a few deer. Two men worked at the intersection, singing and laughing. They didn’t even mind the noise, or the weather, or the birds. It was just them fixing a hole and cracking jokes about doing nothing besides watching cement dry. Distanced changed their shape into faraway dots, bopping on the horizon like ants on the ground, crawling fast and eager to get home before sundown. So, was he, but was it home? No, it wasn’t. It was an idea and he didn’t even know if it was a good one. Many things in the past years had him left confused and full of regret. A regret that meant _I could have shown more what I mean, could have done more to get things done, and be less passive and more active in a stupid game I never understood._ It did not matter anymore these days. He told people stories, they believed them, and he got money for it. People would believe anything you’d tell them when your name came along with a lot of adventure and people they barely knew or understood. _They weren’t like that! Oh no, you did not say that, that is not true._ Hell, what it did matter to them. Or to him. People were so easily satisfied.

                The road turned smaller and lead through a small conglomeration of trees which sucked in every last bit of civilization and the cold air, coming through from whatever the barks hid behind their backs, and rushed ahead as if their time went running out. Seconds raced with minutes, hours tried to catch them both but failed. There was a dance of those passed seconds, like little fairies, singing about the past. A choreographed scenery of what the world used to be. Then they lay down, and it turned into a still life of memory.

                The sun was to sun within the hour and he needed about twenty more minutes until he arrived at the destination. The once old air became warmer the closer he was to the edge of the forest. they bemoaned the departure of an unexpected guest so late in September. Having left, he could see a small silhouette popping up in the fields along the road. It was a farm of mediocre size. The fields behind it though were wide and horses romped around and whinnied. Behind their backs appeared clouds, but they are harmless. They just strolled through like the visitors in an art gallery, beholding the beauty presented to them before moving on to the next.

                He stopped and searched for something that reassured having the right address, but there wasn’t anything providing any evidence. He would have to have a go and what did it matter it was not the person he aimed for, but perhaps an old couple. Jesse would make them happier instead with his visit and let them talk about the good old days.

               

                A trembling hand poured coffee into a mug. He hated when that happened; the muscle did never recover from that accident and so he waited patiently until his limb had adjusted to its own misery. He put the can down and shook his wrist—as if that helped. One of the dogs barked and it a loud noise followed. Something that was too grotesque to be real. He remembered that noise because he used to like it. One of these old bikes he used to have, and he thought that there still was one in the barn covered by trash and other stuff he should have thrown out years after his father passed away.

                He sipped on the coffee and wondered if he should take a look at either of them, but turned away from the window instead and looked outside through the porch door, toward the fields that were soothing. The noise stopped. He frowned and the hand holding onto the mug downed enough to have his eyes raise. Hesitating footsteps there on the other side of the house, the wood of the porch creaked and a knock announced a visitor. Who the hell would visit him during that time of the day? Another journalist with a love for old stories? Some traveler asking for the motel, lying few miles ahead?

                He sighed annoyed because he was interrupted and walked to the door, the other dog was faster and rushed ahead but because she wanted to sniff on anything but the guest. _Great guard dog. I should have called her McCree._ As he thought that, he looked into a face that was the last thing he excepted.

                “Hey,” Jesse said. “I was...” He looked toward the fields to his right and the sunlight lit his eyes. It was an inferno. “passing through.”

                “Passing through, my ass.” Jack replied and he wondered if he still held onto the cup or if he dropped it by now. He didn’t. It was still there.

                Jesse looked at the mug and then back at him. He was 56 now, few more wrinkles than the last time he saw him. A scar across his wrist and back of the hand. Jesse forgot about that all the time, that they have turned older, and him being 44 didn’t make it better. It sounded so old. He never thought to turn 44, or even 30.

                It was funny, the grey pullover Jack wore, because it had the same color as his hair, which was a lot shorter now, too. “Well?” Jesse stuffed his hands inside his leather jacket. It almost seemed as if the cowboy had left and with him, his juvenile sentimentality. Jack grunted like an old seafarer and put the mug down onto a small table somewhere near the door.

                “You little shit. You know: we’ve got phones and pads here, too.” Jack said.

                “Yeah, but mine didn’t work. It isn’t used to the country side, I guess.” He blinked through the sunlight and wrinkled his nose.

                “What if I had gotten a heart attack?”

                Jesse shrugged. “Too bad, I guess. There would have gone my chance to tell you how much I liked that dog of yours.” Jesse pointed at her.

                “I knew you would like her; she equally as useful as you.”

                Jesse laughed. “Oh yeah?” He watched her; it was a Rottweiler and now she sniffed on the strange new object, which was Jesse’s bike. His glanced switched and he looked through a few strands of brown hair at Jack.

                “Ehm, do you want to come in?” He took a step back and held the door open, and Jesse swore he felt a sudden surge that made him suffocate right on the spot. A feeling as if he truly came home, and yet took him into a different dimension of reality. Jack whistled short and the dog came back running. Then he door closed and Jesse heard him pick up the mug. The ceramic scratched the wooden tabletop, hands gripped it and never let go. Footsteps stopped and he searched for another mug while Jesse spied through the history the Morrison family. Pictures, black and white, decorated a wall. Ancestors from bygone days. The light flooded half of the large room and it came through the wide door leading to the back, to the fields, and there was the outline of the forest again. A mug appeared before him. He took it. That smile on Jack’s face was poignant, a little shy, and yet enthusiast enough to be compelling.

                “I guess we’re having a coffee then.” Jesse chuckled and drank from the mug. A shoulder nudged him and he leant in. He beheld the portrait of a woman in her forties taken somewhere in the 1910’s. “Is that what… your great grandmother?”

                “No, it’s a great grand great grandaunt.” Jack snorted.

                “Oh, alright. I apologize.” Jesse scratched his head, worn out by the helmet and adjusted his hair. Or at least he tried to. He did not want to ask about anyone they lost five years ago, and especially not one in particular. Jack just stood there, calm as ever, staring at his own family. This silence was not awkward but excepted a change.

                “How are you?” Jesse asked to break the silence and Jack nodded.

                “I’m good. You? I hope you’re not here because you set something on fire and are running from the law.”

                “I’m not running from the law; the law is running from me. I’m good, thanks.”

                “Still a little, big-mouthed shit, aren’t you?” He muttered into his mug and drank the rest of the coffee. It made Jesse laugh and somehow that laugh was a better medicine for boring, sunny days than most everything he had tried lately. He didn’t mind the secluded quietude, the amount of horses he had to take care of, or the fact that new friends were too lazy to come out here. Just sometimes, he wished there was someone he could be boring with together.

                Once in his life he thought it would have the other one. Now he felt a burst of melancholy spreading in his chest and he was quick to distract himself. Jesse’s arm wandered off and rested on Jack’s back, like some support that was also trying to show some sort of interest. The hand with the mug pointed out to another portrait. “That guy with the mustache is no way related to you though. He looks like a tree with a mustache.”

                “You are insulting my family in my own house?”

                “I said that I liked your dog!” The dog, named Betty, looked up. Jesse replied to her: “Yeah! You’re a good girl!” Betty wagged her tail.

                “Hm,” Jack grunted and narrowed his eyes as he looked at the photograph. Meanwhile, Jesse’s eyes stole glances at the face and then he chuckled again because he liked it when he was grumpy, or trying to be, hiding a smile there in his blue eyes. These eyes looked a lot more alike to what they used to be, many years ago: bright, witty, and soft. All that sternness was gone, faded and now nestled in wrinkles in both corners of his eyes.

                A chortle escaped Jesse’s throat that’s because he found himself in joy of that reunion. He then squeezed him closer and placed a heartfelt kiss on his stubby cheek because he could. Why not? The only thing that could happen was a punch directed into his face, but Jack wouldn’t do that. Instead, he rose his brows and watched Jesse as he let go, heading toward the porch. “I’ll check out the horses now, like a real cowboy should.”

                “Don’t get lost.”

                “Don’t worry, I’ve got you to bring me back.”


End file.
